21 March 2019

Sometimes is not the camera or the lens, but rather an interesting subject, pose or story.

For me, its not really (always) about the gear, but what I can achieve with whatever body / lens is in my hands. Of course, planned body and lens selection for a specific genre should improve the photographer's expected outcome...

Of all my bird images, this image (over a few years) returned thousands of Likes (and very interesting comments) on a variety of Facebook Pages - much to my surprise.

The image is of rather poor quality - captured at distance with an EOS 700D and a first generation EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens many years ago.

I was not even aware of the shot until a few days later. Out of curiosity I posted the image to see if there would be any interest - and without doubt this image is still the most liked and commented photograph out of any of my cameras.

20 March 2019

We have a quite a few of these coots down at the Milnerton Lagoon / Woodbridge Island - most of the time just swimming around and the occasional departure / take-ff. I didn't expect this movement mid-morning, but nevertheless captured the first coot for the Woodbridge Island website.

Shooting in the fog down at Woodbridge Island, Cape Town is a typical glass-half-full optimism scenario. I'm at times hoping for the sun to break through, but know even in the sun's absence, the low light should generally bring a unique background blur against the green grass of the Milnerton Golf Course - albeit at the expense of a softer bird in flight capture. All four (continuous) Birds in Flight images are captured at ISO 1250 - the maximum I will push the Canon EOS 7D Mark II is 1600 (but, not in the fog) - more in lower light due to background darkness and sometimes some early morning winter sun.Auto-IS0I predominately use Auto-ISO with the Canon EOS 7D Mark II and even when paired with my 400mm lens am quite confident to shoot Auto-ISO in good and variable / low light. I must admit that I rarely shoot Birds in Flight in poor / low light. With my very close and elevated proximity to Woodbridge Island I have a good view of the light and weather conditions before every possible shoot.

Blur can really mean different things in digital photography, but should not to be confused with unwanted graininess or digital noise across a digitally created image. Unwanted noise generally occurs when:

shooting in low light, when a digital camera's ISO setting is too high

shooting within the digital zoom range of a compact camera

over-cropping an image

Unwanted blurOut-of-focus blurred area(s) in an image that came about via unintentional camera movement, unwanted subject movement and / or wrong shutter speed settings when photographing movement - something you don't really want.Deliberate blurThis will appear in areas of the image when the photographer attempts to blur certain areas of a composition / image. With foreground in focus, but the background deliberately blurred depending on the Depth Of Field (DOF) - distance between nearest and farthest object(s) of the composition / framing requirements ie. when isolating a flower from its immediate surroundings.

Deep vs Shallow Depth-Of-Field (DOF)With a deep DOF more of the entire image will be in focus and its more likely to be used in Landscape Photography with smaller apertures of ie. f/11 - f16. With shallow DOF specific area(s) of an image is deliberately out of focus and can be applied in a variety of genres (Wildlife / Sport / Macro / Portraits) where the photographer deliberately wants to separate the main subject from the background - for this effect, larger apertures will be applied ie. f/1.8 - 5.6.

Bokeh: visual quality of the blur...The visual quality of [deliberate] blur is also referred to as Bokeh - Japanese for the out-of-focus aesthetic quality of the deliberate out-of-focus (blurred) area. a Wide aperture of i.e. f/1.8 - f/5.6 or so will be used (depending on the lens / optical distance from subject) to create the required out-of-focus effect.See attached images below: white rose bud, the yellow rose and red rose bud with sharp / in-focus foreground sharp and background deliberately blurred (using wide apertures of f/5.8 and f/5.6).

Lens aperturesIn DSLR photography different lenses are used to create / select different levels of DOF depending on the lens aperture range, optical length of the lens and distance from subject. Different lenses / aperture settings will be applied for different type of photography genres requiring blur effects at various focal lengths ie. for close-up / macro, portraiture or wildlife photography. a DSLR camera system is not necessarily required for creating deliberate image blur, a compact camera with a wide aperture lens with some optical zoom will also work.

Which Canon lenses?Desired Bokeh-effects for close-up or macro flower photography can be achieved with a variety of lenses with wide apertures i.e. with fix aperture lenses such as Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM or the EF 100mm f2.9 Macro USM prime lenses.

Any Canon DSLR camera body with either an EF or EF-S lens (or other compatible lenses) attached will generate deliberate background / selected blur, but the Bokeh quality will depend on the following factors:

Aperture settings (wider is better)

Type of EF / EF-S lens (design and optical length)

Depth of field of objects in the frame

Distance to subject / lighting conditions

Accessories used (extension tubes / close-up filters)

Different lighting conditionsIn all the images the objective was to keep the 'unwanted digital noise' across the frame as low as possible. For the "Yellow Rose' image, shot with Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, I used ISO 100 (in crisp early morning sun light) and the 'Red Rose Bud', shot with the Canon EOS 700D, I used ISO 400 with a Speedlite 430 EX II flash (in early morning overcast / raining conditions).